


More Than I Hated

by Drakey



Series: Truth [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Anakin Skywalker Doesn't Turn to the Dark Side, F/M, Gen, I don't owe anyone any diacritics 'cause they're hard, M/M, Slavery, The Jedi Code
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:41:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23874112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drakey/pseuds/Drakey
Summary: While investigating a slaver ring, Quinlan Vos is injured. Obi-Wan scrambles to rescue him.
Relationships: CT-7567 | Rex/Mon Mothma, Lux Bonteri/Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Quinlan Vos, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Series: Truth [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1700803
Comments: 8
Kudos: 84





	More Than I Hated

**Author's Note:**

> This took days to write.

_5 years After the Fall of Sidious_

Obi-Wan twirled in a neat circle. His lightsaber sent at least a half dozen blaster bolts back to their owners and twice scraped through the sand, kicking up shards of particolored glass. Behind him, thirty former slaves cowered and cringed. In front of him, the slavers had long since given up trying to detonate their captives' implants. Most were trying very, very hard to kill Obi-Wan, but a few seemed to remember the old holonet coverage, the pictures of Obi-Wan holding off an army on one planet or another.

It was an advantage he didn't like to play to. People were afraid of him sometimes, and that was something he could use in combat, but he hated to actually do it. There was no escaping this time, not for the remains of the organization, and not for Maul. Quinlan was leading the group securing the docking bays, and once this was taken care of, they were going to chase the Sith Lord right into the jaws of their trap.

Obi-Wan pressed towards his attackers, and the rest of his team worked around him. Lux Bonteri pumping blaster fire downrange like he'd been born for it, Ahsoka batting aside blaster bolts in tandem with Anakin, their old bond as strong as ever. But there were so many of the slavers, and it was a strain.

Just as Obi-Wan moved to link himself into Anakin and Ahsoka's defensive rhythm, a surge of terror and pain ripped across his awareness. Somewhere outside, there was a scream, barely audible over the blaster fire.

Quinlan.

+-+

_3 years AFS_

"Obi-Wan," Quinlan called out. Obi-Wan looked up from his meditations. Quinlan sounded out of sorts, maybe even a little angry. This was neither surprising nor distressing, and if Obi-Wan cared to think about it, which he very much didn't, the fact that Quinlan Vos sounding distressed made him feel comfortable and safe might have worried him. Obi-Wan let himself slowly drop to the floor. He'd risen up about an arm's length while he was meditating, but he was well past the age where being startled out of rising meditation inevitably led to a bruised tailbone.

"Is something wrong, Quinlan?" Obi-Wan asked, standing up. His hand was already outstretched to receive the datapad Quinlan was holding. The other Councilor thrust the device roughly into Obi-Wan's hand. Obi-Wan looked through the data. Financial records. thousands, tens of thousands, millions of credits scrolled in front of his eyes, all payents being shuffled back and forth, for a total of about ten thousand... "Units of what?" Obi-Wan asked aloud.

"Obi," Quinlan said quietly, and _that_ got Obi-Wan's attention, because the only people who'd ever called him that were Qui-Gonn, Satine, Jar Jar, and Quinlan, and with the sole exception of Jar Jar, it had always been quiet and private, like a secret name meant to compel him into compliance. "What can you think of that costs between one hundred and five thousand credits, scaled with age, dropping off sharply when it's about forty years old, and is traded en masse in the Outer Rim?"

Obi-Wan cringed. "We already knew there was a slave trade, Quin. The army is working on it."

Quinlan gripped Obi-Wan's shoulders. "Those are Senator Kvald's financial records," he growled.

Obi-Wan felt his face go pale. Senator Kindd Kvald represented the Outer Core Free Trade Alliance, a group of thirty worlds with populations too small to qualify for their own individual senators. The young Gotal was a vocal critic of the way the army was handling the slave trade on the Router Rim. Specifically, he insisted they needed to eliminate it faster. If he was secretly dealing in slaves, then there had to be something else going on.

"I guess we investigate," Obi-Wan sighed.

+-+

_5 AFS_

The last slaver dropped her blaster in the sand. Obi-Wan advanced on her, and his lightsaber flashed down, a hair's breadth from biting into the woman's nose, and slashed the weapon in two. "Get to work," he growled.

The small herd of slavers immediately set about finding and removing the implants from the slaves under the deft supervision of Ahsoka, Lux, and Anakin. Obi-Wan stalked out of the building into the blinding heat of Tatooine at midday. Several people stared at his ignited lightsaber. Mos Eisley wasn't the sort of place where people reacted to a lit lightsaber with fear. There were multiple shootouts on the streets every day, after all. A Jedi was just someone who would probably try to keep stray shots from hitting anyone. People weren't staring because they were afraid: they were staring because running around with an active saber was a violation of ettiquette, the local equivalent of going around naked.

Right at that moment, Obi-Wan didn't particularly care about Tatooine modesty. He followed the tug on his senses down the street to where a small crowd was beginning to disperse. In the middle of the clearing space was a sadly familiar form, standing over a prone, slightly singed Quinlan Vos.

Obi-Wan made a mental note to scream at Quinlan for going off-plan when this was all over, but for now he had to deal with Maul.

+-+

_3 AFS_

There really shouldn't have been so much dust. Quinlan choked and coughed on the cascading cloud of the stuff. Haashimut was probably the worst planet he'd ever been to, and that was saying something.

"I cannot believe," Quinlan coughed, "that the ancient Jedi looked at every planet in this sector and decided this was the one to build an enclave on."

Mace just snorted. "It wasn't this dusty when they were still using it. Maybe we should open this enclave back up." He held his lighted saber up, letting the harsh violet light play over the dust-smothered surfaces inside of the ancient stronghold. 

"I bet it isn't this dusty on the ground floor, either," Quinlan grumped.

"We'll be sure to ask the band of pirates that's taken up residence there." Mace moved into the room. Shadows slunk around him, prowling things that seemed to want to attack Quinlan. Quinlan ignited his own blade to add more light, and grimaced at the sickly shade his green and Mace's purple made together. 

They walked down through the ancient enclave together. Quinlan could feel the pirates below them, along with almost a hundred slaves. But of course, they weren't here to fight.

Quinlan had a fundamental disagreement with the Order and the Senate about that point.

He could feel Obi-Wan, approaching on a landspeeder from the east, and he and Mace both turned off their lightsabers. Mace bent down, rested a hand against the floor, and concentrated. Quinlan knew he had a bit of a problem with pride. When he used his psychometric abilities, there was always an urge to show off, especially to people he wanted to impress, like when Asajj... like when he was helping Obi-Wan investigate Ziro.

When Quinlan watched Mace use his shatterpoint ability, all of his pride tended to get squashed down in the face of the galaxy-bending power the older Master was harnessing. The floor crumbled beneath them exactly right, and they slid almost silently into the room below. The pirates were heading out to speak to Obi-Wan, who was no doubt spinning an absolutely majestic lie to keep them distracted. 

Mace and Quinlan slipped from room to room in the darkness. He could smell sweat and fear.

A part of Quinlan very much wanted to start a fight. To emerge from the back rooms of the old enclave, lightsaber blazing, and call out the slaving brigands, rescue their victims in a flash of violence and glory. He recognized the tempting call for the will of the Dark Side. The Dark Side was an old friend for him, and he closed his eyes to ignore the thought.

Somewhere not far away, a child was crying. Mace held up a datapad, working quickly with it.

Quinlan schooled himself into patience. These slaves' destinations would lead them further into the slaver rings, and from there they could liberate thousands, but if these slavers found them out, it might ruin all their efforts. Mace finished copying the data, and they hurried back just as Obi-Wan pulsed a warning in the Force at Quinlan.

"Good timing," Quinlan hissed as they made their way back up the structure. "Obi-Wan is done."

Mace raised an eyebrow. "How do you know?"

"You didn't feel him letting us know?"

Mace sighed. "Sometimes I swear you two must have a Force bond."

Quinlan shrugged. "It wouldn't surprise me," he said. "Now come on, Mace. We've got to take down these bastards' bosses' bosses."

+-+

_5 AFS_

The fact that Maul had gone this long without hacking Quinlan to pieces or, apparently, using his lightsaber at all was somewhat miraculous. Or at least, Obi-Wan chose to assume that it was a miracle instead of a plan. Or if it was a plan, Obi-Wan chose to assume that it was intended exclusively to get his attention.

That last theory actually held up to a decent amount of scrutiny. Obi-Wan had been getting more and more reckless where Quinlan was concerned. Getting distracted and having his guts sliced out in a lightsaber duel over the man would actually kind of fit, at this point.

"Let him go, Maul," Obi-Wan said.

Maul turned around with a smile. "Kenobi," he hissed. "It's so good to see you again. Come here and let me kill you."

Obi-Wan charged in, but Maul immediately had his own lightsaber up. They locked blades and growled at each other. Maul was stronger. That had always been the case. "Mama Talzin didn't raise no weaklings," Quinlan had remarked, not long after they first found signs of the Dathomiri Sith in their investigations.

+-+

_4 AFS_

Obi-Wan was drunk. Anakin had seen this twice before. The first time had been ten years ago, when Obi-Wan was forced by ancient rituals to drink an entire bottle of something that had glowed bright blue and lit up his mouth and esophagus for hours afterwards. He'd negotiated with the Quaestor of Thollime while they were both so piss-drunk that a young Padawan Skywalker had to carry them both back from the Treaty Shack with the Force.

The second time he saw it had been right after Satine was killed, in those last horrible months of the war, when it sometimes seemed like the whole Jedi Order was about to tumble pell-mell into the Dark Side.

Obi-Wan and Quinlan had arrived at the party early, and Quinlan had immediately comandeered a bottle of sparkling wine. As each new guest arrived, he'd greeted them with typical Vos-ish cheer, handing out glasses of alcohol and complaining about how awful the year they'd all just been through was. Vos had consumed three glasses before the bottle was empty, but they were small glasses and it was a large bottle. 

Obi-Wan had spent the entire time until midnight nursing a single glass of something called _wampi-tampi_ that Jar Jar had brought. The Gungan had been the only other person to drink any of it. The bottle was now gone, and Senator Binks was snoring facedown on the couch. He looked uncomfortable.

Quinlan had kept plugging gamely along while Mace scowled and Yoda matched him drink for drink. Despite the fact that he seemed to have consumed his own volume in alcohol, Yoda had walked out, apparently unaffected. Anakin wasn't sure if it was the Force or a quirk of his alien biochemistry. Quinlan, on the other hand, was currently passed out on the kitchen table.

An hour and a half after midnight, when all the pyrotechnics were over, when Ahsoka and Lux had made what they probably thought was a discreet exit, when the other Jedi were gone, the children asleep, Rex and his goon squad off to their homes, and the leftovers put away, Anakin and Padme had sat down on the outside balcony with Obi-Wan to pass a bottle of fine Soulean brandy back and forth and reminisce about their long years together. 

Three hours, the brandy, some rum, and some retsa later, Obi-Wan finally came to the point of why he was so out of sorts.

"I just... I can't believe they killed it," he said. The three of them were still sitting with their legs dangling over the canyons of the city. Anakin could just make out the Jedi Temple in the distance.

"The slavery investigation?" Padme probed gently. Anakin stiffened at the guess, and then stiffened further when Obi-Wan nodded.

"Slavery?" Anakin asked. A flickering rage turned over in his belly at the word, something that never quite went away, no matter what he did.

"Obi-Wan and Quinlan brought evidence of a widespread slave trading network to the senate four months ago," Padme said. Obi-Wan nodded along, a morose wavering of his profile. "It got caught up in comittee, tossed around for a while, and then added to the back of the queue for army tasks. It was kept very quiet, attempts to draw attention to it in the Senate were repeatedly overshadowed by some senator or another just _coincidentally_ introducing a dramatic, controversial bit of legislation, and it's kind of an open secret that a cabal of senators who were profiting off the slaves used the bureaucracy to kill the investigation deader than Sheev."

As always, a little frission of dread crept up Anakin's spine at the mention of Palpatine.

"Now we can't even investigate it ourselves," Obi-Wan said. "It's officially in the hands of the army, and the army has better things to do.

"You know, there's a solution to this." Padme handed the retsa to Anakin and stood to help Obi-Wan up. Anakin sipped while his wife, always steady on her feet, lifted Obi-Wan and guided him inside. "And I don't think you get to stop us from taking it. They may not have official authority anymore, but I think all six hundred and eighty Jedi Apostates are probably going to be on this soon."

"Why?" Obi-Wan asked.

"Because you just mentioned it in front of my husband. Now let's go inside and pass some state secrets into the hands of people without the security clearance to see them."

+-+

_5 AFS_

Maul was a furious whirlwind of red light. Obi-Wan actually felt a strange sort of peace, fighting him. Some of it was Soresu, of course. A true master became the eye of the storm, a perfectly calm center as inevitable and invulnerable as the onward march of time itself.

The rest of it was that this was almost certainly his last fight as a Jedi. His blue blade crossed Maul's red one again and again, and each time, he thought of a way he had violated the Code or gone against the will of the Council, and he smiled a little bit.

He'd broken the Code with Anakin.

Too attached, a low strike that he stopped a bare centimeter from his left knee.

Too permissive of darker urges, a high blow that Maul made while vaulting over him.

Too blind to see Anakin's perilous progression toward a fall, a jab that he redirected so it barely singed his cloak.

He'd broken the Code with Quinlan, too.

Too attached, a diagonal chop that he redirected over his head.

Too emotional, a sweep that he jumped over.

Too exclusive, the return sweep that he slowed with a hard chop of his own.

Cato Neimoidia, a series of staccato strikes as Maul activated the other blade of his lightsaber.

Yavin, a monstrously powerful blow that he blocked in order to slow it down while he sidestepped and then immediately returned to position.

He'd gone against the Council over and over for the past year.

Giving the slavery investigation to Anakin, a burst of lightning that he caught with his left hand and sent off into a nearby hut.

+-+

_4 AFS_

"Passing classified information to a civilian?" Rex stared incredulously at the two Jedi in front of him.

"To be fair, only half of it is classified. It was just technically illegal to collect the other half." Quinlan Vos smiled at Rex and came in without waiting for an invitation. Mon squeaked in dismay from the couch, where she had been sipping a mug of spiked caf. "Senator," Vos greeted.

"Quin!" Master Kenobi scolded, still outside. "I am so sorry about him, may I come in to explain?"

Rex nodded, a smirking little grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. Mon was already standing up, looking between the two Jedi and Rex. "Should I be going?" she asked.

"No," Rex began, but Master Kenobi was nodding pointedly at him, so he sighed, "yes, apparently. I'm sorry about them, they have really bad timing."

Mon picked up her mug, chugged it, and hurried over to kiss Rex on the cheek before she left. "It's not so bad," she said. "I'll see you tomorrow, Captain."

As the door closed behind the senator, Rex turned back to two identically amused faces.

"I didn't realize we were interrupting," Master Vos said.

"Yes, well, that does happen when you barge into someone's house," Master Kenobi said. "Honestly, Quin, how are you on the Council with those manners?"

"Barely," Master Vos replied. "Rex, we're here because you have the connections to put together an army."

"Oh no," Rex said. "Nope. I served my tour. Won the war, saved the Republic, restored order to the galaxy, the whole thing."

"We only need you for six months or so," Master Kenobi said. "Anakin and the other Apostates have the slave trade pinned down, but they need more people if they're going to wipe it out for good."

Rex squeezed his eyes shut. Slavery was the biggest, most inviting rage button he and most of his brothers shared. It was what Palpatine had been planning for them, what their lives had been on Kamino. The senate had a lot to answer for, and the monstrousness of the Clone Trooper Project was one of the big ones. "Dammit, general," Rex growled, "How many do you need?"

+-+

_5 AFS_

Maul's blade sparked and hissed against Obi-Wan's. "I do wonder one thing," Obi-Wan said, exactly as though he wasn't locked in deadly combat with the man. "Did I happen to investigate your operation, or did you take over the slave trade when you realized I was investigating it?"

Maul broke the saberlock and spun back away from him. Absently, as he caught and deflected another electric assault, Obi-Wan wondered when Maul had learned to use lightning. "Does it really matter, Kenobi?" Maul rushed forward again, the two ends of his lightsaber flailing at Obi-Wan. "Surely you'd rather spend the last moments of your life thinking about how I'm going to kill everyone you've ever loved."

"You can't even kill him," Anakin's voice broke in, just as Anakin himself rushed in beside Obi-Wan. 

They hadn't fought side by side for five years. Obi-Wan was worried for just a moment, and then the old bond in the Force between them flared to life, like they had never been apart: Master to Padawan, Jedi to Jedi, brother to brother.

"I had this covered, you know," Obi-Wan complained.

"For once, I absolutely believe you," Anakin said, "but we're starting to attract attention, so I wanted to wrap this up quickly. Are we capturing him?"

Obi-Wan frowned at Maul, who had jumped back and was now glaring hatefully at them. "He's enslaved millions, killed just as many, and is a blatant danger to the people I care about," Obi-Wan said. "We treat him as a Sith Lord."

"Got it," Anakin said. 

Maul broke and ran. Anakin and Obi-Wan moved as a single unit.

+-+

_4 AFS_

Ahsoka stifled a laugh and closed the door. "What's so funny?" Lux asked. "I thought you were going to get Master Kenobi."

Ahsoka hurried her senator down the hall. She sat him down in a chair by one of the popup tables they were using on Liberation Base, and she slunk up onto the table in front of him. "Master Kenobi is asleep right now. So is Master Vos."

Lux turned that information over. Ahsoka loved to watch him think, because he'd never quite mastered the art of not looking a little dumb while he did, and it was very cute. Lux opened his mouth to ask a question twice, but only voiced it on the third attempt. "I've always wondered if Jedi wear pajamas," he said diplomatically.

"Actually, I think Master Vos was wearing a hisp-silk nightshirt. Obi-Wan was still in his Jedi robes, but this might be the first time he's slept in a week." Ahsoka fought down a fit of giggles. "But Lux, they were _cuddling!_ Master Vos had his fingers all tangled up in Obi-Wan's hair like he'd been petting him."

"He probably was," Cody said, coming in from the war room. "I love and respect General Kenobi, and General Vos is a brilliant tactician, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone repress their feelings that hard in my life. Are you going to tell them about who we found at the head of the market rings?"

Ahsoka sighed. _That_ was certainly a mood killer. "Yeah. Yeah, Obi-Wan needs to know about Maul." She stood up, but Lux caught her hand and pulled her down to press a kiss to her cheek.

"It'll be okay," Lux said.

+-+

_5 AFS_

Maul was sprinting towards one of the docking bays. It wasn't exactly a surprise, but it _was_ vexing. At the last moment, he jumped, bounding high enough to just barely touch down on the roof before disappearing on the other side. 

Obi-Wan slid to a stop. Beside him, Anakin stopped at almost the same instant. A Gauntlet starfighter emerged from the docking barely fifteen seconds later, its boarding ramp still going up. Obi-Wan and Anakin both stretched out their hands and dug into the Force, and like they'd never stopped working together, they pulled together on the ship.

Master Yoda was supposed to have done something like this at the Battle of Coruscant, throwing one enemy troop transport into another. There was no second ship here, so the two, master and apprentice, threw the ship at the ground. 

It moved slow enough that there was no explosion, and it might even be salvageable. Fighting the ship's engines was a strain, and Obi-Wan saw sweat beading on Anakin's forehead, knew he himself was trembling slightly. Anakin threw his lightsaber, and it slashed neatly through one of the ship's engines.

Maul vaulted over the top of the ship. He must have never been in it at all, using it as a distraction so he could get close. Anakin's lightsaber hadn't yet made it back to Anakin, and Maul lashed out, slashing the hilt in two. He charged straight at Anakin, laughing maniacally.

+-+

_4 AFS_

"You hate him," Quinlan said into the dark. He could feel Obi-Wan seething. They hadn't mentioned the bond between them out loud yet. It was tender and new, freshly grown since Cato Neimoidia.

"I don't hate," Obi-Wan said. Quinlan reached up and found Obi-Wan's hand. Their shared quarters aboard the _Shellbreaker_ had a pair of bunks, the matresses so tiny that there was simply no sharing.

Quinlan wasn't sure when he'd started having trouble sleeping without Obi-Wan in the room. He was beginning to think that he might also have trouble sleeping without Obi-Wan next to him. This was likely to be a problem once they got back to Coruscant.

"Obi, we've been through too much together for you to get away with that bantha shit."

Obi-Wan heaved a great sigh. "I've... had a lot of trouble with emotion lately." He gripped Quinlan's hand. "Quin, we're going against the Council. And half of them probably know it. And no one is saying anything because we'll do more good this way. It's frustrating, and it keeps frustrating me no matter what I do. And he's... of course he's behind it all. I know he hates me. But I'm a Jedi, Quin. I can't... I can't have feelings like that. I can't feel this way. So why can't I stop?"

Quinlan squeezed his eyes shut tight. "I... I've been there, Obi. I've felt it all before. Back then... with her... Hate wears you down. It gets into your veins, if it's real."

"How did you get out of it?" Obi-Wan asked.

"I loved more than I hated," Quinlan said. In the long silence, he wondered for a moment if he'd said it aloud or just thought it particularly hard.

"That's not the Jedi way," Obi-Wan told him after entirely too long.

"It's not," Quinlan admitted. "It's what I did, though."

+-+

_5 AFS_

Anakin didn't falter in the slightest. He gestured, and Maul was thrown hard into a wall, closer to Obi-Wan than Anakin. Obi-Wan charged towards the dazed Sith, and Maul barely got his lightsaber up in time to block. 

Obi-Wan struck again, and Maul caught that blow just a little better than the first.

Obi-Wan swung a third time, and now Maul was starting to find his equilibrium again. This time, it wasn't just a block, it was a full parry, and Obi-Wan slipped back into Soresu. Maul struck again and again, and then, abruptly, he stopped. He scrabbled at his throat, gasping, and his lightsaber shut off.

Obi-Wan stopped with his lightsaber poised to remove Maul's head.

"Obi-Wan," Anakin began, but a blaster shot rang out and a hole appeared in Maul's head.

+-+

_5 AFS_

"I'm not letting you go out without me and come home bruised and charred again," Padme had said. 

Anakin was wise enough that he hadn't pointed out that her presence wouldn't prevent him from getting hurt, but somehow Padme hadn't expected the biggest hazard to be Quinlan Vos.

"It's a trap," Vos insisted, his eyes wide. He dropped the blaster he'd yanked away from the bounty hunter he'd just attacked. "Maul is waiting to attack while the slavers are fighting with Obi-Wan."

Padme felt her face going white. "He's going to kill them all," she muttered.

Master Vos took off running, and he rounded the corner ahead of her. Before Padme could follow him around the corner, he went flying backwards, thrown by arcing, surging lightning. Padme ducked into a corner, keeping just barely in position to watch what was happening. Maul stalked up to Vos and hit him with lightning again, two, three, and then four short blasts. A small crowd began to gather. Now that the fight seemed mostly over, the sight of a Sith Lord at work was drawing out the curious.

+-+

_5 AFS_

Anakin let the corpse fall, and Obi-Wan turned to see Padme lowering a chunky pistol. "We treat him as a Sith Lord," Padme said. 

Obi-Wan relaxed a tiny bit, then sprinted back towards Quinlan.

He was a limp form in the street. Smoke had stopped curling up from him, but he wasn't moving. Obi-Wan dropped to his knees and slid to Quinlan's side. His hands pressed against Quinlan's side, then moved up to his head.

Quinlan drew in a shuddering, shallow breath.

Obi-Wan flipped him over, onto his back, and Quinlan's eyes fluttered open.

"Hey Obi," Quinlan said. His voice was unsteady, his eyes unfocused. "I think he broke a few ribs and maybe a leg, but the good news is that my sympathetic nervous system is very good at dumping endorphins into my bloodstream to fight pain, so I feel great!" He looked down at his legs and winced. "Probably not time to go for a walk, though."

"Quin," Obi-Wan said, "what were you thinking?"

"I was trying to help you," Quinlan said, as though that excused him from almost dying.

"I could have handled it," Obi-Wan said.

Quinlan sighed, suddenly serious. "Maybe. But I needed to be sure. I was... I was afraid for you. Did you kill him?"

Obi-Wan shook his head. "Padme killed him. I didn't even know she was there."

Quinlan's seriousness slowly dissolved, and he swayed a little. His eyelids drooped, then he flared his eyes wide open again. "You were too busy thinkin' about me, weren't you?"

Obi-Wan chuffed out a tiny laugh. "Of course I was thinking about you. Look what Maul did to you."

"Obi," Quinlan said. A smile wandered drunkenly across his lips. "Obi Obi Obi..." He surged forward and pressed his forehead against Obi-Wan's. Quinlan's met Obi-Wan's gaze, and slowly, he returned to focus, brown eyes going sharp while his hand pressed to the back of Obi-Wan's head. Obi-Wan felt Quinlan's presence in the Force, an unsteady flicker, like a candle being carried from one room to the next, but with no hesitation, Quinlan embraced the whole turbulent tangle of Obi-Wan, and where Obi-Wan's fear and anguish and--yes--hate should have extinguished him, he simply burned them away.

"It's okay, Obi, I'm here." Quinlan adjusted his grip a little while Obi-Wan sagged just the tiniest bit, and then his eyes unfocused again and he said "these endorphins really are very nice, though, and I think I'm about to pass out."

Obi-Wan caught him before he could fall onto the ground. A few clones were coming down the street, and they had a stretcher. Quinlan was, in fact, going to be okay.

Obi-Wan helped them load up Quinlan.


End file.
